


from heedless shores unknown

by Kryptontease



Category: Original Work
Genre: Exploration, First Kiss, Light/Mild Body Horror, Other, Setting - Jungle, Treading That Thin Line Between Fear And Desire, Tricky God/Human Relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25790227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptontease/pseuds/Kryptontease
Summary: Balian had survived eighteen hard months in the jungle. At last, his dream was at hand: single-handedly discovering the lost temple of Azrimanth. He had devoured all of the journals and expedition notes about it. He dreamed of it in all of its glory: flying buttresses, marble pillars, glass creations of indescribable beauty.He could not have imagined anything further from the truth.
Relationships: Explorer/Forgotten Deity of a Long Lost Shrine
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11
Collections: Original Works Opportunity 2020





	from heedless shores unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [architeuthis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/architeuthis/gifts).



The sun was up, finally. Balian watched as the morning crested the jungle canopy. Light fell onto the tangled thicket of exposed roots and revelcharm vines. In the pre-dawn murk, he had hacked through the tangle until he had reached the jungle floor and once he'd struck ground--tossed his machete aside and dug into the green earth with his bare hands. It had been hours of backbreaking labor with no rest, distraction, or water. But his reward was now at hand.

As the sunlight filtered down through the trees, Balian spied his prize, half-obscured by uprooted moss. 

A single wayfinding stone. 

Gods below, he had nearly buried it with his frantic digging. 

As he checked it against a sketch in the margins, the map shook. Balian took a deep breath, and steadied his hands.

The glyphs on the wayfinding stone had been worn--no, almost worn. He traced a finger over the stone. The outlines of the glyphs still had a tactile shape. He followed the glyphs with his finger as he shakily drew his impressions on the other margin of his map. When he had finished, his eyes flew from his hasty scratch to the original sketch.

The glyphs matched.

It was the correct wayfinding stone; the last in a chain of twelve. 

Balian pressed a fist against his cheek as his excitement crested. Tears prickled under his eyelashes. This was it. The culmination of eighteen months of his life; eighteen months of hard travel through nigh-impenetrable land. A dream that had been mocked and derided by his peers, had lost him nearly all of his influence at the Adventuring Club, and cost him his post at the museum when he had been caught sneaking a first edition expedition journal back onto the archive shelves.

He took a swig of water from his waterskin. And then another. Arms shaking, he forced himself to cap the waterskin before he drained the rest of it. His work wasn't done yet; and as lush as the jungle was, those living within it jealously guarded their water. The only reliable way for an adventurer to collect water was to time a downpour, and lay out a series of water-catchers that fed into a waterskin. Anything else, the jungle drank.

(If he were truly desperate, he could try the revelcharm vines--but chewing on their hallucinogenic pith was as good as dying.)

Even though his throat ached for it, Balian packed the half-filled waterskin back into his carry-all and pulled out the focusing crystal from its protective case.

Balian laid the map against the thicket and held the focusing crystal in front of it. He rolled it around between his fingers until it began to catch light. 

Careful hands had faceted the teardrop-shaped focusing crystal. The artificers of Ebrizal were legendary for their craft. The instructions he had been given were simple: hold the crystal to the light above an anchor--something with a tangible connection to whatever you sought to find. The focusing crystal would for a bridge between the anchor and the missing object. The only magic ingredient that the spell required--the artificer had warned him--was desire. 

And so Balian had followed the focusing stone from wayfinding stone to wayfinding stone, from a dusty museum storage basement to the edge of the known world and beyond.

Now it was time to find what he truly desired: the lost temple of Azrimanth.

He held the focusing crystal up to the sun and prayed. 

He cleared his throat a few times. “Reveal the path to the lost temple,” he incanted in a dry rattle. As he always, he hoped had that speaking his desire aloud would imbue the spell with more power. If only he could picture the temple of Azrimanth…

...but there had been nothing but whispers in the archaeological record that he had scoured for clues. Whispers and rumors. 

Hadn’t he shown how devoted he was to the expedition? How he’d challenged the shallow river basins that grounded all ships that tried to navigate her, and won. He’d built a raft out of bamboo and pushed it along the sandy banks alone.

And hadn’t he proven how single-minded he was in the pursuit of knowledge? He had trekked through the miles of poisonous mangroves that had sewn the skeletons of other adventurers into their roots, his face wrapped up in a heavy cloth for weeks on end. He hadn’t succumbed to the desire to shimmy up their trunks, even though he could have gained a clearer view of his path. No. He’d endured the suffocating veil until the mangroves had thinned out and been replaced by numberless other trees. Only when the last mangrove had lain behind him by a day and a half's pace--only then did he unwrap his face and breathe his first free breath in the shadow of the rainforest.

By the time he had picked his way across a dried-up salt marsh, his loneliness had dulled to a blade that could barely pierce skin.

And now, as he repeated again, “Reveal the path to the lost temple.” He felt a tiny soaring vision sneak its way into his conscious mind.

He would find the Temple of Azrimanth, and then he could return to the warm comforts of the city. He’d be set for life. Lecture circuits. Book signings. Maybe one guided expedition for the Adventuring Club before he retired to a life of leisure, surrounded by his adoring public.

Yes.

He would never be alone again.

The prayer formed a physical shape inside the focusing crystal and Balian could feel the knowledge pour into him. 

**What you desire is beyond the thicket. Cut through it and follow the last rays of the sun to the zenith.**

Eagerly, Balian grabbed his machete. The revelcharm vines shrunk back, and bit by bit, he hacked his way through this final obstacle. Balian was dimly aware that he’d left the carry-all and the map back in the clearing, but those objections evaporated in the fierce light of his certainty. He was so close to the Temple.

 _It wouldn’t be long now,_ he thought.  


Balian trudged through the undergrowth. The restless understorey of the jungle looked no different than it had since he crossed the thicket; but he had felt the ground slope begin to lessen. The way had begun to flatten, and he no longer had to grab for handholds to pull himself up through the vegetation. The last rays of the sun flitted through the jungle canopy and fell in rays at his feet.

When the spell resounded within him, Balian stopped as cleanly as if he’d hit a wall. 

He had arrived at the zenith of the hill. Balian spun on his heels as he eagerly drank in the sights. His eyes swept from trunk to branch to canopy. He knew what signs to look for. He’d read all of the available monographs, devoured all of the sketches from returned expeditions… the jungle revealed nothing. No statues or columns or temple halls grown over, only the same over-bursting verdant wall of life that pressed unceasingly down on him for hour upon unending hour. 

Confusion dug its claws in. 

The cult of Azrimanth had spanned millenia; their temples had anchored an entire civilization with their architectural prowess. Truth and Beauty were the cult’s chief virtues--their temples had been adorned with flying buttresses and soaring columns and artificers’ glass that broke light into washes of color. Although scholars had argued whether Azrimanth had originally been a deity--the priests certainly didn’t seem to speak about a being--one thing that had been clear in the literature; Azrimanthine shrines were never _humble_. They didn’t simply _disappear_. Even a thousand years of abandonment and neglect wouldn’t erode the beauty of what he sought. 

The haze that the spell had worked on his mind suddenly cleared. He’d left all of his food and water back in the clearing. 

His supplies had seemed so unimportant to him at the time...and now it was at least a quarter of day’s walk back. If he didn’t turn around right this second, he was as good as dead. 

Balian’s legs locked themselves to the spot. His legs stiffened and groaned from sheer exhaustion. They would move forward or not at all. 

WIth a great resignation, Balian hobbled forward. He noticed a stone that seemed higher off the ground than he expected. 

_Could it be a...cover? A secret underground entrance?_ he thought feverishly.

The stone slab was the picture of humility. The elongated plinth had two grooves that had worn into mere depressions. He traced a finger along them, and discovered that they were in the shape of hands. Human hands. 

That was all. 

Balian dropped to his knees. He was going to die for absolutely nothing. He had failed to locate the Temple. He had cruelly wasted his own life. Eighteen months of the extremities of hardship...and it had amounted to a single, inscrutable stone in the middle of a trackless jungle. 

And fate had snatched even his ability to shred the tool of his downfall, that accursed _map_. That laughable, inane map that he’d found hidden away in a cartographer’s drawer in the museum’s vault. He understood now. It hadn’t been under lock and key because it was _valuable_. It was _dangerous_. What fools could it have lead to their ruin. Balian’s hands seized up and fell onto the stone as he wept bitterly in the jungle which he had not noticed had fallen deathly silent.  


A horrible tension wracked Balian’s body, and his eyes flew up to the canopy. A scorching ball of light had detached from the last rays of the sunlight and now--somehow--was approaching him, swelling in size, and burning to ash all that it touched. The mote of light picked up speed until the prismatic shell engulfed the entirety of his vision. Bolts of lightning lanced through the understorey. Shadows flared and died as the jungle roiled into flame.

Balian’s hands gripped the stone as though it would save his life. He braced himself for death, strangely thankful to be freed of his consuming shame.

 _At least it won’t be slow,_ he thought with a horrible sense of relief.  


*

The realization dawned on Balian all at once. The jungle burned and raged around him--but the conflagration gave off no heat. The fire danced in a circle around him. A circle which they seemed unable to pass. As the blaze twined together and rose into the sky, the firestorm took on unearthly hues; the flames curled and spun like pigment swirling through linseed oil before the painter had time to mix a smooth color. It was unlike any fire he’d ever seen.

A lidless eye swam into being. A ray of light sprang forth from its pupil and raked the clearing. 

A voice boomed out of the twisting column of flame. _WHO SUMMONS ME? NAME YOURSELF._

Whether he was delirious from the trek from the jungle, or from the inevitability of his death in the orgy of color, Balian heard himself say:

“Oh sorry. I didn’t think--I mean, I’m sorry to have bothered you!” 

_NAME YOURSELF, ENEMY OR NAME THE HOUR OF YOUR DEATH._

Balian lost his grip on reality. He plunged into the fantasy he had had of his life, post-jungle. Warmth fell across his face. In his mind's eye, the conflagration transformed into a small hearth fire in a finely wrought iron grate. He saw himself in front of it, tucked into a wingback chair with his favorite monograph on his knee. A library of his own, yes, in a comfortable estate. A garden, perhaps? Better than that: a patch of forest in one of the further-flung provinces. No more scrambling through the crowded streets of Ebrizal. No more scorn from the decorated explorers who spent their graying years in the Adventurer's Club tearing down the young up-and-comers. Just the easy life of the well-appointed adventurer.

None of that would be his if he died here.

It was such a foolish dream. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth. “Would twenty-five years from today be too great an ask?” He felt like he was going to pass out the moment the words passed from his lips.

He felt a wind tussle is hair in a rush of...wings? A terrible cry on the edge of his perception swelled and then was snuffed out. None of that could be right.

_IT HAS BEEN FIXED. IN TWENTY-FIVE YEAR’S TIME, YOU WILL MEET YOUR END._

Balian felt himself nodding as though he understood anything of what was happening, like he was back in lecture with the Adventuring Club, when they hosted advanced maths speakers. He agreed for the sake of being agreeable; to what he was agreeing escaped his brain, which could only hold onto the terror of his current predicament. 

Terror, and--whatever questions popped into his head. As they always did, when he wasn’t pushing himself through miles of uncharted territory--that restless unceasing desire to explore and to know.

Before he could stop himself, the question had already escaped. “...by any chance, are you Azrimanth?” 

_NO._

“...would you tell me your name? Or name the hour of your death?”

_I CANNOT DIE._

“Your name, then?” 

_ARIZMECH._

“...that sounds pretty close to Azrimanth to me,” Balian said faintly, as he removed his hands from the plinth and sat down--or more likely, collapsed on it. 

_AZRIMANTH IS MY GOOD-FOR-NOTHING BROTHER. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME OF AZRIMANTH._

“Yes, sorry,” he apologized again. Balian stared out into the yawning abyss, wreathed by rainbow motes of dancing light. Galaxies collapsed and reformed in the dying light. 

“Arizmech.” Balian sighed. The thought behind his question had scarcely made itself felt when Balian felt a heaviness in his body, and a certainty that he was on the verge of death itself. He’d pushed his body past all of its tolerance, beyond all good sense. He didn’t even remember when he last ate. 

(Assuming that he hadn’t in fact resorted to eating the revelcharm vines, and was not currently trapped in their web of hallucination.)

“I think my hour of death is _now_ ,” Balian confessed. His voice was barely above a murmur now, and he thought that the rainbow motes of light had begun to swarm together, and press in closer around him. “Thank you for showing me something wonderful before I died.” 

Balian slumped forward, and found himself not in the clammy embrace of the jungle floor, but somewhere else entirely. He was in a bed back in the city; his bed, fourteen months ago, before he set out with the map, the crystal, and enough gear to make it to the first leg of the Sagausul river. An inn bed. Not his own. Couldn't be his own--he didn’t have a home anymore. Not one on this side of civilization, anyhow. His thoughts chased after other thoughts until he gave up and passed out, halfway-out of bed, and more than half-delirious from giddy terror.

A rainbow shower of motes surrounded the room for an instant. The mass of light coalesced into a vague shape, a murmuration of light, and moved through the room. It did not care for any of the things it found there, and at last, hovered over Balian in the strange position in which he slept. It hesitated for one long minute as Balian's chest rose and fell. The mortal had not died, he merely had fallen into a deep slumber. Thus satisfied, it slipped out of the inn room through the gaps in the doorway. As the innkeeper rounded the corner on his way to turn down another bed, it winked out of sight.  


Arizmech felt the ebb and flow of time batter its body upon the return from the void. It manifested in the mortal’s room, ready to renew the show of power that it had begun the night before. When it stepped through in a shower of gentle light, Arizmech found the mortal sitting on the inn bed, cinching up his boots.

_WHAT DO YOU MEAN TO DO?_

“Well,” the mortal started, “I’m an explorer. It’s really all I’m good for. If I return to Ebrizal with nothing to show for my journey...well. Better that I died in the jungle.” 

Arizmech shifted the plane around them, and walked them through the endless choking stairway between reality and void. From long experience, Arizmech knew that the journey passed in a blink of an eye to the mortal--but Arizmech felt all one hundred milliseconds of the trip as half an eternity, as it carried the mortal’s body in its arms from the inn room to their destination.

The mortal blinked and shaded his eyes with a hand. The jungle was just as it was yesterday, untouched and thriving. Arizmech had returned them to the point where they had met. It was the most significant place in any realm; the Hailing Stone, which called across dimensions. From the state of the plinth, and the enormous green walls that had grown up around it, Arizmech surmised that the mortal realm had forgotten about this shrine and its purpose. 

_IS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS PLACE NOT MAGNIFICENT ENOUGH? THE HAILING STONE JOINS THE TWELVE REALMS. FROM HERE, YOU MAY COMPEL A BEING FROM ANY PLANE OF EXISTENCE._

The mortal lowered his hand. 

“It’s a stone,” the mortal said peevishly. “No matter how marvelous, I can’t earn a lecturer’s salary off of the discovery of a stone. The people want temples! They want splendor! They don’t want the truly miraculous. They don’t want to _know_ they’re not alone. They only want...” the mortal’s voice died away and he looked like he was about to faint.

“ _WHAT?_ ” Arizmech felt a stillness shudder through the core of its being. The voice had sprung out of Arizmech like the spoken language of a human, not simply manifested from thought.

“You, you’re a--”

Arizmech looked down. Rainbow motes had coalesced into a shape that resembled a shimmering body. 

The mortal swallowed. “You’re, um…” The mortal dropped his eyes. “Yes, uh...good.” 

Arizmech narrowed its eyes, and then stopped to pat what seemed to be a face. Yes, it did in fact now have eyes, set into an almost-human face. 

Arizmech plucked out one of its eyes, so it could examine itself from head to toe. The body that had manifested was unclothed, which suited Arizmech fine. The hot climate seemed to be favorable for this state of undress. The body appeared human, male, of a healthy disposition and median in age. Arizmech clenched and unclenched a fist, and watched muscle ripple and shimmer from within. The cool black tone of its skin threw off iridescent sparks where the sun touched the silver-flecked motes that moved underneath its skin. 

Satisfied that the body was of good shape and character, Arizmech stuck its eye back into its socket.

“ _IT WILL BE EASIER TO CARRY YOU LIKE THIS,_ ” Azirmech conceded. “ _WHEN WE TRAVEL THROUGH THE VOID BETWEEN REALMS._ ” 

“Okay,” the mortal said, his voice little more than a croak. 

Color had risen on his cheeks, and he refused to look Arizmech directly. He stole glances from the side, and Arizmech felt the overwhelming urge to pinch the bridge of its new nose. 

“I’m going to...gather my things back at the clearing. It’s a quarter of a day’s walk in that direction,” the mortal said, jerking his thumb towards an undifferentiated patch of living growth. “If you want to wait here, or--tag along--I guess I can’t stop you.”

“ _WHAT IS YOUR NAME, LITTLE EXPLORER,_ ” Azirmech boomed. 

The mortal started to say it, but then fell silent. Thoughtful. “If I tell you my name, you’ll kill me.”

“ _NO LONGER, FOR I KNOW THE DAY AND HOUR OF YOUR DEMISE._ ”

“Call me Explorer for now. Satisfactory?” 

“ _AS YOU WILL._ ”

Arizmech stepped forward to grab the Explorer and felt extremely discomfited when the Explorer easily dodged the grasp, and slipped to the other side of its body.

“Thank you, but ah--I’d prefer to walk. Until you get your--” the Explorer swallowed nervously-- “clothing situation sorted.”  


The Explorer shot out from the Hailing Stone in a random direction. Arizmech felt unease, but set out after him.

As they crossed the jungle, Arizmech discovered that it now had to obey some of the laws of this plane: when Arizmech struck a large rock, its legs wobbled; when they crossed a river, Arizmech had to engage its legs in terrestrial locomotion. To open a door between reality and the void took strength and concentration, and the return to the jungle had sapped Arizmech’s reserves of both. 

Perhaps this was what happened to all of the gods who stayed on the mortal plane for any length of time. It was known that many of Arizmech’s compatriots had come to this realm, and many had chosen not to return; they had chosen to become gods and demi-gods and some had even, Arizmech remembered, chosen mortal life--for all of the good that would do them to die at the appointed hour, like all the rest. 

Arizmech desired very greatly to ask the others what the meaning of this body was, but it did not know any left that would answer.

The Explorer kept stealing glances at Arizmech. Furtive looks. Nothing with sinister intent--that much Arizmech remembered. At one time, Arizmech’s counsel had been prized by all who sought its temples--but now, everything seemed a puzzle. It could not discern the meaning behind these looks, or why the Explorer seemed stricken if Arizmech met his glances with open curiosity of its own. 

It was unsettling that Arizmech had forgotten so much about human behavior.  


*

Ground traveseral proved treacherous. Arizmech caught the Explorer before he could tumble into a well-disguised ravine. The ancient glacier path had grown over with chokevines; to the human eye, it looked just like the rest of the forest. It would have been a very unlucky step.

“What are you doing--?!” the Explorer demanded. 

Arizmech held the Explorer firmly around the chest, and then pushed off the ledge. They sailed over the ravine and alighted on the other side as deftly as a pair of hummingbirds. 

The Explorer breathed heavily in Arizmech’s grasp. 

“ _DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO ASK OF ME?_ ” Arizmech queried. 

The line of the Explorer' back burned against Arizmech’s exposed skin. Arizmech noted the temperature differential, and willed its physical form to dissipate. Its arms faded into a cooling mist that lapped and soothed wherever it touched the human’s body. 

The Explorer made a half-strangled sound, like he had been wounded.

“Let go,” the Explorer whispered.

Arizmech obeyed.  


*

The march through the jungle was enough to stretch a god's patience.

The Explorer had asked none of the traditional questions. He had no contract to present for inspection, nor required Arizmech’s blessing to consummate a wedding bond. He hadn’t even asked for a Oath--which Arizmech was duty-bound to grant, as the summoned one, so long as the terms were within Arizmech’s power. 

The Explorer did not even seem to know the Ritual of Sending, that would have banished Arizmech back to the Pitiless Realm, where it had spent the last thousand thousand years languishing in a trap of its brother creation. 

Another riddle. The Hail that had summoned Arizmech had reached across the twelve realms and shattered the magic of its ancient prison. An incomparable power had freed Arizmech; a power that could only have belonged to The Enemy. When Arizmech had burst into the mortal realm like a firebrand, all of its senses had been momentarily blinded. Arizmech had seethed and blustered and prepared to kill or die rather than return to confinement. 

But there had stood only the little Explorer, who had merely asked for the hour of his death to be offset--as the invisible minions of Death swarmed thickly around them like gnats, gloating upon his impending doom. One pressed too close to the protective circle that the Explorer’s soul afforded, and a fight broke out amongst them. In a fury, they bit and tore at each others’ wings. 

The Explorer had, Arizmech surmised, staved off Death with great frequency, denying these messengers their ferrying coin. But even one skilled at cheating death would not have survived the encounter with the Hailing Stone. If not for Arizmech’s intervention, the little Explorer would have died in that green prison. 

And now Arizmech felt no trace of that power that had called it to this realm. Nor had it felt the movement of The Enemy, nor the peevish treachery of its brother. 

The Explorer seemed to know nothing of the ancient war; he made none of the ritual sacrifices to disguise his movements; and Arizmech felt no compunction to raise the spectre in the Explorer’s mind.

Perhaps Arizmech had returned to a kinder realm than which it had left. 

Arizmech’s senses swept the jungle restlessly. The way was safe for now. The only challenge that lay before Arizmech was the Explorer himself. It would have to bide its time to discover what, if anything, the Explorer might desire.  


Returning to the cleared thicket proved harder than Balian reckoned. Overnight, a thunderous downpour had opened on the jungle, obliterating his tracks through the jungle. At intervals, he could find hacked-through revelcharm vines to mark a crude path back to his equipment--but now the most likely path back to the clearing was bisected by a surging river that overtopped its banks and twisted through the exposed roots of centuries-old climbing trees. Balian stuck close to the climbing trees. He yanked their drooping branches down to form a crude hand-hold as he picked his way carefully across the slippery rock and scrambled through the underbrush to avoid dangerous mud pits that littered the jungle floor.

As Balian made slow progress downhill, he felt the gentle heat of Arizmech at his shoulder, just a pace or two behind him. He only let himself glance behind once, when they were crossing the river, to make sure Arizmech had crossed safely...whatever safely might mean for...whatever Arizmech was. Not human, most definitely. God, maybe.

Balian had seen Arizmech wade into the river and felt his heart sink when the water had covered over Arizmech’s head--but his traveling companion had emerged on the other side, with only a faint air of curiosity at the water droplets that surged down its skin in a rainbow cascade. Something in Balian ached for the light that pooled in Arizmech’s obsidian-colored hand, and he felt a dawning panic as he buried the feeling as deeply as he could. 

_This is one of the reasons I escaped to the jungle,_ he thought desperately. Companionship was simply not written into his plan. Balian would establish himself first, yes, and then he could think about the finer things in life. Courtship was its own adventure, and he had always thought of himself as approaching it with the same determination that launched him from heedless shores into the unknown. There would be maps, and guides, and signposts, and and _and_...

Balian perseverated on this topic as the day slipped further on. 

After a quarter’s day travel, the sun crested the jungle canopy and pierced the green veil. Balian cast a doleful eye around him. He couldn’t judge how far they still were from the thicket. 

He dropped to his knees and bowed his head. He wasn’t particularly religious, but here is where he would offer a prayer to the Wayfinder, whose stones he had tracked through the impenetrable green abyss. 

Balian felt rather than saw Arizmech approach him. A shadow fell across Balian, and he tried to keep his body from trembling. “ _HAVE WE REACHED OUR DESTINATION?_ ”

“No.” Balian threw it arms across his eyes so he wouldn’t be tempted to stare so openly. “It’s going to take more than a quarter of a day at this rate.” Balian could feel a flush rise on his skin, just from the proximity of their bodies. He muttered into his arm: “I’m going to need a minute.” 

A set of fingertips ran over his forehead, and Balian bit back a gasp. The sensation did not feel like skin against skin; against the hot flush of his own body, Arizmech felt like a quenching rainfall. When the touch withdrew, Balian stifled a sob. 

“ _YOU APPEAR DAMAGED. I WILL REMEDY THE CAUSE._ ”

Balian sprung to his feet and ducked under Arizmech’s arm. He stared out into the jungle while his pulse thundered in his ears. “No! It’s fine. I am fine. Everything is fine. 

“We’ll just, um, keep heading towards the thicket. My equipment is important, even if the map is ruined. If the focusing crystal is still there, I need it. I need to take it and shove it under those artificers’ faces, so they can explain to me why they sold me an absolutely useless, accursed piece of junk, that couldn’t even find--!”

Balian’s shoulders rose and fell unevenly. He couldn’t even stop himself if he tried.

“The crystal couldn’t even find the Lost Temple of Azrimanth! The crystal was supposed to find what I truly desired. I’ve studied every scrap, every journal article, every expedition notice for that Temple for ten years! What will I be when I return _with nothing?_ ”

“ _Explorer. Face me._ ” Arizmech’s voice sounded almost human. 

In a surge of unwise emotion, Balian rounded on his heels, his eyes blazing. “Why are you even _here_? To gloat? To wait for the hour of my death?”

Arizmech tipped its head to the side, and Balian thought he saw a ripple spread throughout Arizmech’s whole body. Eyes opened and closed over the whole of Arizmech’s insubstantial skin, twinkling in and out of existence. When the ripple subsided, Arizmech seemed solid. Solid enough that Balian’s hands would meet firm skin if they were to touch. Solid enough that Balian wouldn’t fall into starlight if he stepped forward into an embrace...

To Balian’s relief, Arizmech met his gaze with the conventional number of eyes. “ _The day and hour of your death are known to me. My oath requires that I keep you alive to meet it._ ”

“Who are you?” Balian whispered. “Who were you to...us?”

The voice broke over the jungle like a thunderclap:

 _I AM ARIZMECH, THE OATHKEEPER._

In a quieter voice that seemed to spring from the being in front of him, instead of from the air itself, Arizmech continued: “ _My temples gave patronage to contracts and courtship rituals._ ” Arizmech paused. “ _Now answer: why do you flinch away from me thus? Is the cult of my brother so strong that you find me repugnant?_ ”

“Your brother’s temples lie in ruin.” 

Arizmech’s face lit up with true pleasure. Streaks of blue light cut brilliant paths down his skin in patterns that echoed the glyphs on the wayfinder stones. Balian imagined that this is how Arizmech would look if Balian dropped to his knees in front of him, and took him into his mouth--how Arizmech would look, face flushed with pleasure, if Arizmech could feel it like a man would--

Balian cursed himself and whatever gods would listen for giving him knowledge that he couldn’t forget, even if he tried. 

Balian licked his lips, and forced himself to pick a spot in the dirt and focus there. History was a safe topic, he thought, so long as he just didn’t look up. “Priests called your brother Virtue, and worshipped what they thought was Truth and Beauty.”

“ _Hah! My brother was the Rulekeeper. He gnashed his teeth and broke things that weren’t his._ ” 

“Well, then, you’ll be glad to hear that no one has worshiped your brother in a thousand years.”

_THEN LET THE JUNGLE KEEP HIM._

The power of that voice reached down into Balian and stirred him. He was completely helpless to it. In a hazy lust, Balian’s eyes rose inch by inch to Arizmech, who stood in the center of an iridescent bubble that twitched and writhed with power. Inside the bubble, Arizmech pulled the blue lines from its body, by running hands down the full length and breadth of its human form. Arizmech’s hands passed over its ribs, its flank, its thighs. The blue glow lifted off of its skin as easily as removing clothing; in the air, Arizmech shaped the light into sigils and then blew them into dust. 

_ON MY OATH, LET MY BROTHER REMAIN FORGOTTEN._

The blue light reformed into a swarm of glowing butterflies that darted away through the jungle canopy. 

“ _You will never find his temple now,_ ” Arizmech said at last. Was it Balian’s imagination, or was Arizmech’s voice mixed with the barest regret? He could barely think through the dimness of mind. All he could feel was how he burned to touch and be touched. 

The iridescent bubble faded. At war with himself, Balian shrank backwards as Arizmech approached him. Ever step backwards felt like a betrayal. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t-- 

“ _You have spoken plainly, but still you obfuscate. Why do you flinch away from me thus?_ ”

“I want to fall to my knees and worship you,” Balian confessed as tears sprang up in his eyes. 

“ _Impractical,_ ” Arizmech said slowly, as if it was working through a troublesome problem. “ _I was never worshipped as such._ ”

“You’re the most beautiful--being--I’ve ever witnessed.” Hot tears spilled down Balian’s face. “And it feels like I’m going to die if you don’t fuck me. Please, I don’t want to run. Please, just touch me.”

Balian was wracked by a full body spasm as Arizmech’s fingers ghosted across his skin. Terror and desire swam together in his mind as his vision faded. The last thing he heard was: 

“ _YOU ARE DAMAGED, EXPLORER. I WILL REMEDY THE CAUSE._ ”  


It was twilight when Balian woke. He shot up from where he lay--or would have, if there wasn't a curious weight restraining his torso.

He looked down. An arm the color of the night sky had been thrown across his chest. Balian ghosted his fingers over it, and then twisted to look behind him. A symphony of curious eyes returned his gaze. He blinked, and then there was simply a face: Arizmech’s face, impassive and achingly handsome. They were lying on a duvet cover on a familiar bed.

They had returned to the inn. Someone had pulled his boots off and set them next to the foot of the bed. He was otherwise dressed as he had been; though he was curiously free of the caked-on grime that he'd become so accustomed to in the jungle. Arizmech laid next to him--as Balian was starting to think was its usual habit--naked and unconcerned.

Balian swallowed nervously as desire rose in him again.

Arizmech murmured: “ _How long were you in that jungle, Explorer?_ ” 

“Eighteen months? If I didn’t lose my reckoning.” 

“Humans were not meant for solitude. Your heart has filled with madness that can only be cured by time.” 

Balian tried to clear his throat. “And your solution is to...”

“Touch you until your desire for it fades. A simple remedy we knew thousands of years ago.” 

The monotonous knocking resolved finally into a sound that he understood: the innkeeper was hammering on the door. Futily, Balian imagined, as he saw the field of iridescent energy flexing to keep the door firmly shut. 

“You have to pay for accommodations, you know,” Balian said faintly.

“ _LET THEM TRY TO MOVE ME._ ”

Serenity descend upon him. Balian knew what he wanted. He turned in the circle of Arizmech’s arms. Face to face, Arizmech glittered as though it had trapped twilight stars. Slowly Balian closed the distance between them until he could see his breath puff against Arizmech’s skin. Arizmech was still; its chest did not rise and fall like a man's would. Breath apparently was unnecessary on the mortal plane.

“What if this remedy of yours doesn’t work…?” 

Balian leaned forward tentatively. Arizmech didn't flinch but did not bridge the distance either. Balian sighed and pressed one small kiss against lips as cool as the night air. And then with the greatest restraint he could muster, he pulled back.

Arizmech stirred in bed, and Balian could feel the air change. Something had shifted. The skin around Arizmech's face cracked, as blue energy spilled out of its eyes; and inside of them, Balian saw disquieting and trackless monuments to power that had lingered in the margin of the world, unknown and unseen for a thousand thousand years. His months in the jungle had driven him past sanity; or maybe the wayfinding stone had pointed him to exactly what he had desired, after all. 

“ _YOU ARE THE EXPLORER. PERHAPS YOU WILL TELL ME._ ” 

Balian thought he could rise to the occasion. He leaned in for another kiss and Arizmech responded in kind. Yes, by truth, this was what he had desired. He grabbed for anything solid--a wrist--and prayed one last prayer. 

“Promise me you’ll stay solid,” Balian said as he drew Arizmech on top of him.

As the sun set on Ebrizal, and Balian soared on the blind voiceless currents of desire to further shores than he had previously dreamt. In the morning, he would maybe need to care again that he’d only returned from jungle with his boots, his life, and nothing to pay the innkeeper; but that was a concern for tomorrow. Tonight was promised to the unbreakable word of the Oathkeeper.


End file.
